Getting Free Market Research from Big-Name Research Companies

by Jennifer Tribe

Published on this site: March 23rd, 2004

You know you need to do some market research. Maybe you’re writing a business plan or are testing the waters for a new product launch. Perhaps you’re looking to improve your marketing efforts. Whatever the reason, finding the statistics you need can sometimes feel like a daunting task.

Never fear. Research companies employ full-time analysts to study particular industries, products, or services and compile detailed statistics in long reports. Chances are good that if you’re interested in a particular market, somebody has already analyzed it.

There’s just one small snag: reports from these big research companies can be quite expensive. Several thousand dollars, even tens of thousands of dollars, is not at all uncommon. At these prices, such data is all but unavailable to small-business owners and infopreneurs.

The good news is that there’s a way around those hefty prices. You can access snippets of the larger reports for free in two places: press releases and executive summaries.

Finding Information in Press Releases

Research companies make their money selling information so they need to publicize that information as much as possible. As a result, most of them issue press releases concerning every report they produce.

These press releases sum up the findings of the report in a few neat paragraphs, and almost always include a handful of key statistics. Often, this overview information contains all the data you need for your business or marketing plan.

To find press releases, visit the on-line media room of the companies that cover your market. Below are some major researchers and the markets they track.

• Forrester Research: information technology
• Frost & Sullivan: information technology, consumer healthcare, energy, electronics, chemicals
• Gartner Group: information technology
• Jupiter: information technology
• Marketdata Enterprises: service industries, healthcare
• NPD Group: consumer products and issues
• Roper ASW: consumer attitudes and behavior, advertising effectiveness
• Simba Information: publishing, training and technology advertising
• Yankelovich: lifestyle trends

If your market isn’t listed above, or you want to find more companies, you can always search a news wire such as Business Wire or Canada Newswire. News wires send out press releases to various media outlets on behalf of their corporate clients, and post to their web site every release they send out. These press release portals will give you access to a very broad range of topics and industries.

Finding Information in Executive Summaries

Executive summaries are often used by the research companies as marketing tools to whet the appetite of clients for the more detailed report. They can range in length from one to 10 pages or even more, depending on the length of the full report. Best of all, they are free.

Like press releases, executive summaries review the key findings of a report and reference the main statistics. Executive summaries are typically found in the catalog of reports on each research company’s web site.

© 2004 Juiced Consulting
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